Tonight Live: While War Looms, Open Source Makes Big Strides in US State Legislations

At 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.... Kevin Hill, Jeff
Gerhardt, Doc Searls (Linux Journal), Arne Flones and Russ
Pavlicek; are back live tonight. We have a great show lined up
tonight on The Linux Show!

Segment One- The News. We will cover
THE HOT NEWS of the last few weeks. The whole crew
should be on line tonight. News includes: The egov open source
conference, FCC follow up, Microsoft Vs Linux Numbers debunked,
more SCO, and way more.

Tonight on the show we will be joined by Cooper
Stevenson of MVLUG in
Oregon. Cooper is acting as a concerned citizen and community
advocate to promote a recently proposed piece of Oregon State
legislation that strongly promotes Open Source software as an
option for government purposes.

The idea of the legislation was a brainchild of a friend of
Cooper, Ken Barber. Unfortunatly, although we had
also planned on having Ken as a part of the segment as well, it has
become imposible. Ken, a network administrator from Eugene, Ore.,
contacted Oregon State Rep Phil Barnhart and talked with him at
length about the issue of Open Source as an alternative option.
Barber eventually drafted the legislation Barnhart introduced in
the form of Oregon HB2892.

Crushed by shortfalls, state and local governments; as well as
school distrcits from coast to coast are looking for ways of making
up the cash crunch shortfall. Frustrated by these budget woes,
Oregon legislator Barnhart has introduced the bill created by
Barber that would require state agencies to at minimum consider
open-source software when making future IT purchases.

"The idea of the Bill", said Barnhart,"is to offer cheaper and
more flexible options to government agencies through the use of
open-source, standards-based software rather than proprietary
applications."

The focus of the bill, according to cooper, is that expensive
proprietary applications and operating systems cost more to buy and
maintain than similar open-source alternatives, while providing few
additional benefits.

Cooper Stevenson is the Coordinator for the Mid-Willamette
Valley Linux User's Group in Corvallis, Oregon and is an active
promoter of Open Source Software for home and business use. He is
the owner of Intrinzix Wireless.

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